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John Smart - "The Limits of Biology and The Promise of Technology"

Date and Time: Friday, November 30, 2007 from 4:00pm until 6:00pm MST

Location: Tubac Room, 4th Floor, Student Union Memorial Center, 1303 E. University Blvd., Tucson, AZ, USA 85721-0017 | Google Maps

Description: John Smart - Futures scholar and systems theorist, founder and president of the Acceleration Studies Foundation (ASF), and editor and author of Acceleration Watch.
Title: "The Limits of Biology and The Promise of Technology: Considering the Roles of Life, Computer, and Nano Sciences in a World of Accelerating Technological Change"
Abstract: "Some wishful futurists claim and many people hope that advances in the life and health sciences will allow us to greatly extend both our lifespan and our innate biological capacities (memory, stamina, strength, etc.). But there is widespread evidence for severe limitations of biological vs. technological systems. We have noble social goals to prevent (much easier) and to cure (much harder) all manner of debilitation and disease, and in the process to extend our lifespan closer to its historical limit (circa 120 years). Furthermore, with the appropriate R&D priorities we are likely to see good, rather than anemic progress toward these limited objectives for all our planet’s citizens in coming decades. Nevertheless, a clearheaded assessment shows there are broad and apparently immutable restrictions on what is technically and socially practicable in biointervention science. History shows it is our ever-accelerating computing and automation technology that have given us the greatest leverage toward our life science goals. Looking only a few decades ahead, we can see our computing technologies greatly surpassing even our highest biological abilities, and the inevitability of "digital twins", assistive AI agents that will closely model our personality and continuously record, analyze, and augment our daily lives. Such systems will give each of us a broad kind of cyberimmortality in society, even when our biological bodies grow old and die, as they apparently always must, for deep evolutionary biological reasons. What are some of the implications of these biological limitations and technological trends on the kind of research we do today in the life and health sciences?"

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Meeting Notes

ASF
- small, non-profit community of scholars
- concentrates on accelerating change
- STBS: Science, Tech, Business, Society
- practices "evo devo" future studies

Developmental
- Geosphere > Biosphere > Neosphere
- "Finite Sphericity and Acceleration = Phase Transition"

Moore's Law
- built into the microcosm?
- a few curious minds can find great efficiencies

people find ways to make things more efficient

Population
- growth curves fall off

Possibilities of the future
- continuation
- limits and discipline
- decline and collapse
- transformation

Matter, Energy, Space, Time > Information
"MEST Efficiency in Doing More, Better with Less"

First thing to come alive can blow through the phase space

Nanotech (nanoscale science)
- Infotech (computing)
- Sociotech (social technology)
- Cognotech (brain science)
- Biotech (biological technology)

Intelligence is a rigged game, waiting to give out prizes

Toshiba Nanobattery
- 80% recharge in 60 seconds
- 99% duty after 1000 cycles

Metaverse economy
- all progressions are from material to abstract

Metaverse Roadmap

AI
- 1998 1.3 words Altavista
- 2005 2.6 words Google
- 2012 5.2 words Google Help
- 2019 10.4 words Google Brain
- Average human query: 11 words
- Newspeak

Face-to-face (f2f)
- 2/3 information is face-to-face
- Personality capturing, your digital you
- "I would never upload my consciousness into a machine"
- "I enjoy leaving behind stories about my life for my children"

Plants to humans and humans to neuralnet scales
- things will be seamless, an extension of us

Symbiotic Age
- fiborg - functional cyborg
- a time when we will begin to feel "naked" without our computer "clothes"

Microcosm 1960's
Telecosm 1990's
Datacosm 2010's
Valuecosm 2030's

Edge of breaking "mediocrity"

1. Tech learns 10 million times faster
2. Selective catalysts, not controllable
3. First generation of any tech is often transhumanism

Evolution and Development

innovation and sustainability is important

Biological Evo Devo
- body plans have decreased

Developmental biogenesis is being worked on

Language
- 200,000 words in English
- sound around 600 mph
- 120 things that can be done in our reeds, low energy, quick regeneration

Universal Bio Devo
- emergent properties
- infomorphic
- Big Bang Singularity, Information singularity?

Hyperspace is the future if intelligence

Space is a good place to see where we came from
- Why hasn't intelligent life visited us?
- each civilization is a system that shoots internally
- providing an Encyclopedia Galactica crushes evolutionary varieties

Go out (backup earth) and realize we need to go back in

Monkey vs Robot
- anti-depressants burn out the brain

Life extension mostly "squaring the curves"

Most complex humans
- bottom-up biology is old and slow
- bottom-up tech is faster, ethical, and easy to test variations

GECCO
- technology needs to be looked at as more organic
- we need to view ourselves as more technologic

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